Betsizing low stakes live

I know this topic has been beaten to death across numerous forums, just curious what you guys think since I respect the opinions here much more than anywhere else.

To date I have had tremendous success using a 4x+1BB opening raise strategy coupled with half pot bets on flop turn and usually 1/3 pot on river. The idea was simple; I noticed fish's hand ranges were so incredibly weak I wanted to capitalize on that by keeping them invested in the hand, thus enabling me to also make some really thin river value bets like A4o on a AJ897 runout. It also makes my bluffs really cheap when I'm cbetting something like ATss on a K97 flop with 1 spade.

I dont have any problem with maintaining this style, but sometimes I feel like I might be missing out on some huge value precisely for the aforementioned reason; fish's hand rages are incredibly wide. Tihs week I've been opening to 5x+1BB and 3betting 5x over any raise, donkbet, and full out potting any street for value, and usually 1/2 to 3/4 pot as a bluff. It's only been a few sessions so results are not in yet, but just wondering if despite how exploitable live games are, if you would still prefer to stick to 2/3 - 3/4 pot betting strategy for value/bluffs, and 3x'ing any villain raise when warranted. At least thats what the few crushers in my room seem to stick to.

I guess it just seems to me like if you raised KJ and the flop is QT9ss and a fish has 54ss, T9o, any straight draw etc, they are just never ever folding, so you might as well pot it. They wont even notice how much you're betting, they just feel they must always call. Thats fine and all I suppose when they flop big, but I do feel confident they are probably folding all of their mid pairs and other trash hands for full pot sized bets, as opposed to 1/2 pot where they feel inclined to chase backdoor draws or something. I dont even know why they're paying off rivers so much, I guess when you bet $120 into $400 they feel like they're priced in or something. But if I can get the same value potting it on every street and assuring myself they are getting it allin on the turn/river then maybe I should step it up a notch.

I wouldnt make huge generalizations when playing live like you have to use one betsizing pattern. Your sizings should vary from player to player and hand to hand for whatever is going to get you max value. In general though vs worse players the larger sizing is fine as they are more inelastic

Probably missing out on money if you are 1/3ing the river regularly. Larger preflop betsizing also seems ok at 2/5. It is often that 4x is standard and even 5x pretty often because people play their ranges the same as though they were facing 3x. If you are in a game where everyone is folding to your 4x and most people are actually making that asjustment, switch tables/room. Recs come to play hands

It depends on the player. If they are a fish that is never folding i will even do an over bet. Your right a lot of the times they have nothing but by the time you reach river you should have an idea of what the have.

Flop and turn are good spots for probe bets. Adjust and set up your river or turn bets accordingly. Over time it will be easier to gauge your opponents hand strength especially when your in position.

Gotta say I like the fact you keep bringing up new spots to discuss that are centered around fundamentals of live poker. I think threads like this are like non-existent on LP even back in its busy days.
A LOT of people open 4x. A lot of the really good players do also so not knocking them. But between my circle of live players that I discuss poker with. (all with winrates equal or better than mine [i win about 11bb/hr at 2/5 deep which is where this is most relevant to relate to. the tougher the game the less we can get away with. I should also add in most of the time I'm not running many suicidal bluffs at all its mostly just solid ABC bluffs in spots where the board just runs out really well for me and their range is too wide].). We have fully switched to opening for 3x even in deep games. And then isoing to 5bb+1 per limper. Because we can enter the pot cheaper we can play looser ranges because of the price we are giving ourselves. Live poker donk-crusher-winrates (assuming you aren't making mistakes with your natural value situations. Can only be expanded further by getting yourself the opportunity to bluff the fish more frequently. And make more "good hands" that "cooler" their hands. Cooler is used super loosely there since it can be extremely funny how weird situations are for fish where they just will never fold in certain spots. That said though fish actually (gonna have to take this with a grain of salt) but are the people that you want to be bluffing the most. That is a seriously dangerous thing to say though so I'll say it again. Be careful to assess how each fish is playing. a solid 30% are just not folders whatsoever. Some can be stationy in certain spots and total folders in others. And a minority of them will just be folders always. I'll step back from that thought a second though and go back to 3bb. Essentially this is the cheapest compromise between. Limping. building the pot. Making the fish play a little bit looser (this will bring in mostly just the same range but a higher number of offsuit combos than they would normally play. the more offsuit hands we can entice to play the more hands they can fold post in certain spots). However still not so loose that we cant ever get the pot HU and 3 way a similar amount of time. Playing more spots vs fish that have very repeatable and frequent spots we can over bluff is a huge part of building a winrate IMO.

Ok so now to the post flop betsizing. I am not a fan of it at all TBH. For example. Lets compare a 400$ pot on river. We can bet 120 or 300. if we get called half as much we still make much more money. Yes there are certain hands we can valuebet with a smaller sizing. In that case... Use it. You don't have to be balanced against anyone but decent regs. But for all your other hands that can be valuebet as 300. Do it. Also for your bluffs. if youre using 120 the only thing youre going to be folding out is missed draws. The logic of your bluff being cheaper doesnt help us here the same way it does preflop in my example. In my example we are using it to open MORE. In this case realistically we cant bluff almost ever for this sizing so we are doing it less. The fact that its cheaper isnt helping us do anything extra except pass up spots that would otherwise be profitable bluffs potentially. But being locked in the mindset of being balanced here is definitely a leak. Also for the people you do need to be balanced against. You wouldnt want those sizings anyway. You would want 300 into 400. So theres just not advantage.

this is getting really long so I'll just say about the oversized 3bets and stuff. I really dislike it. We wouldnt use it as a bluff very often at all and its killing our value when we cant 3bet hands like AJo just to iso the loose fish. It would be a total bluff in which case its taking away from our winrate to not be able to do it.

"if you would still prefer to stick to 2/3 - 3/4 pot betting strategy for value/bluffs, and 3x'ing any villain raise when warranted. At least thats what the few crushers in my room seem to stick to."

This is fine tbh but you dont have to be so rigid. Don't be overly balanced against bad players imo.

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance, by running away from the scene of an accident.

I'm gonna add in also. 2 of my friends have winrates of 15bb/hr and 18bb/hr at games up to 5/10 over thousands of hours each. They are much better at me at crushing the souls of the table they are at when its soft. So when im saying my winrate. I think a lot of people would equate that as the classic online impression of live poker. 10bb/hr= good winrate. Its similar to what 1.5BB/100 was online back in 2011. Everyone said if you win at 1.5 ur rly good. if you win at 2 ur a god. But that wasnt true, because there certainly were people beating it up over large samples with 3.5+. (not sure the current state of the games) but my point is dont get limited by the belief that 10 or 11 is the magic number. This is a mini rant but Im basically trying to say. I suck compared to my friends. I dont know where they are getting these extra bigblinds but I am jealous as fuck.

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance, by running away from the scene of an accident.

"Because we can enter the pot cheaper we can play looser ranges because of the price we are giving ourselves." be very careful with this.
if you raise too much, you will through burn chips too fast and start putting yourself in situations were your range is crushed by the people that smooth call you and you become the fish. i do 4x and play a tighter range, because people call with dumb shit and theres no need for me to play dumb shit to win their money.

not really a fan of 3x at 2/5. some of the issues i have with it are the you are battling the rake too much and not getting enough respect. i experimented with it, but with 9 handed you know its never gona get through and once 1 person calls, they all do that 'since hes calling i gotta call shit' and it ends up going 6 ways to the flop. if by chance your in late postion and have a huge fish in the blinds wouldnt u rather put more money in? even 5x or 6xing against someone who has the propensity to call. say you make it to 15 and super fish calls his big blind special. you win the pot 7 dollars goes to house and you win 10. despite having a positional and skill advantage over him, the rake just kills your edge. in reality fish dont care about 15,20, or 30 i just choose 20 because it balances my bet sizes with the few decent players on the table. If the table were all fish or fish heavy, i might even open to 10x.

On July 31 2016 10:06 JohnnyBologna wrote:
"Because we can enter the pot cheaper we can play looser ranges because of the price we are giving ourselves." be very careful with this.
if you raise too much, you will through burn chips too fast and start putting yourself in situations were your range is crushed by the people that smooth call you and you become the fish. i do 4x and play a tighter range, because people call with dumb shit and theres no need for me to play dumb shit to win their money.

not really a fan of 3x at 2/5. some of the issues i have with it are the you are battling the rake too much and not getting enough respect. i experimented with it, but with 9 handed you know its never gona get through and once 1 person calls, they all do that 'since hes calling i gotta call shit' and it ends up going 6 ways to the flop. if by chance your in late postion and have a huge fish in the blinds wouldnt u rather put more money in? even 5x or 6xing against someone who has the propensity to call. say you make it to 15 and super fish calls his big blind special. you win the pot 7 dollars goes to house and you win 10. despite having a positional and skill advantage over him, the rake just kills your edge. in reality fish dont care about 15,20, or 30 i just choose 20 because it balances my bet sizes with the few decent players on the table. If the table were all fish or fish heavy, i might even open to 10x.

I mean if you're decent postflop imo all your postflop decisions will be fairly +EV. If youre burning money its going to be having hands that cant continue enough so youre giving up the pot too much(IE check fold situations too frequently) which I'm assuming is what you meant but all your bets postflop should be +EV or youre just not playing postflop correctly. And in practice I dont find that to be true at all. Though there are tables where you naturally have to play tighter at. Which is fine. Youre allowed to vary your preflop opening range ^_^.

2nd point about the rake and people calling too wide. honestly I find it to not be the case i think people on average only peel like 15- MAYBE 20% more at the very most. But we are trading that for acquiring additional equity spots. Also people calling too light is not a problem for our value range at all. We are fine goin 4 way with AA or even 5 way. We should be making plenty of +EV decisions. And getting peeled by anyone who flopped a pair on the flop. Which there are now more of. I mean i dont want to go as basic as. If you have the best hand keep betting for value and if you don't fold. But it really is that simple imo. Postflop is not hard at all imo with 3x. And as for the betsize affecting postflop. You can just cbet the same sizing you would with 4x. Open to 15 get a call. go HU and cbet 35. The 1 bb difference really doesnt matter. This is unlimited holdem. We are allowed to bet as many times the pot as we want on any street. that includes adding an extra bigblind .

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance, by running away from the scene of an accident.

Didn't read all the responses, but dude it sounds like you are trying to play the whole low stakes poker like one computer simulation. Take everything hand by hand, player by player. Notice who is drinking a bit too much. Notice the guy you can make tilt in just one simple hand, then take his money within the next 30 minutes. Make friends with the guys to your right and left so you pretty much always know what they have if you are in a big hand with them.

If you are going to make over $20/hr at $1/2 or $1/3, you have to play really damn well, much better than you would at a single table online. The good news is you have live tells, and a shit ton of more time to relax and think.

This is kinda contrary to your overall preflop point. The biggest mistakes most live players make are preflop. They put too much money in to the pot with bad hands oop. They defend their limps and blinds by calling large raises oop with bad hands. So we can put ourselves in awesome positions post flop by:

Having a better hand (stronger range because they play too many hands)

Having position

Having the betting lead

If we can get them to shovel lots of money in to the pot preflop when we have those three advantages then we're going to make a ton of money. The more money they put in, the more their mistake is magnified.

Dude you some social darwinist ideas that they are giving hitlers ghost a boner - Baal

This is kinda contrary to your overall preflop point. The biggest mistakes most live players make are preflop. They put too much money in to the pot with bad hands oop. They defend their limps and blinds by calling large raises oop with bad hands. So we can put ourselves in awesome positions post flop by:

Having a better hand (stronger range because they play too many hands)

Having position

Having the betting lead

If we can get them to shovel lots of money in to the pot preflop when we have those three advantages then we're going to make a ton of money. The more money they put in, the more their mistake is magnified.

lol i read this a while ago and glanced over it and was nodding my head at the time like. yup yup and besides the end I didnt even realized you were disagreeing with me.
I agree about the 3 factors that make fish lose money. But I disagree how youre interpreting them. And definitely disagree that all 3 of them have to be present. You implied ofcourse that having a hand is the essential factor. Which isnt necessarily true. Like i said I agree with those 3 factors but its the equity all of them yield you combined that yield you profit. For instance if a tight fish limps UTG and im on the button with 98s I would ISO. For value. I am going to get value out of playing that hand. Even though if you think about it he prob has a ton of KTo etc. But its the combination of the 3 factors that are going to yield me money. The times I improve I can valuebet it effectively. And the times I miss I can bluff in a lot of spots (Very much overbluff completely in any spot thats profitable because no need to balance). Also fish dont auto call down anymore. In a lot of spots fish are total folders on lots of run outs. They are very loose on the flop typically (though it is usually fit or fold looseness. Such as bottom pair = call. Not in the sense that they float u OOP). But will play very straightforwardly. Yielding us a much higher % success rates on thin valuebets and lots of mutlistreet bluff potentials where they essentially just have to spike 2pair to be able to call down. We do agree to a large extent about the factors involved. But we are interpreting the meaning differently

I just saved a bunch of money on my car insurance, by running away from the scene of an accident.